


Exercises in Futility

by EmmyAngua



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fluff, M/M, New Year's Eve, New Year's Resolutions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:35:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyAngua/pseuds/EmmyAngua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Sherlock destroyed his friends’ resolutions and one time he actually helped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exercises in Futility

**Author's Note:**

> For earlygreytea68 who asked for either Snowstorms or New Year’s Resolutions. I managed to squeeze both in there as it turned out.

**Mycroft**

In fairness to Mycroft he never actually wastes his time making resolutions. His ‘resolution’ is not so much a desire to change something as it is to prevent something: war.

This is already something of a challenge. There is a lot of justifiable anger on both sides, a tormented history, and the ministers can’t understand why these foreigners don’t have the same sort of religious worldview as their own vague C of E upbringing gave them.

They are about to enter three days of negotiations (Mycroft isn’t technically there, but then again Mycroft is never officially anywhere.) When the chief diplomat for the other side turns up wearing a scowl and the most obvious toupee Mycroft has ever seen, he thinks it might actually be easier to declare war there and then.   

This is precisely _not_ the time for one’s younger brother to pop in for a chat. Mycroft knows at once that Sherlock is here to steal some sort of ID from him, but he’s too stunned (and angry, very angry) at Sherlock’s sudden and unexplained appearance in the middle of Geneva to put up a protest.

Sherlock attempts to distract Mycroft with some unpleasantly personal banter, pockets the ID quite blatantly and saunters away with a wink.

He turns in the doorway.

“Oh. You do know that’s not the ambassador? The real ambassador is currently locked in his hotel wardrobe and under armed guard.”

Mycroft had already worked that out, but he was hoping no one else had.

Sherlock is out of the door before the first shout of fury is heard.

**Molly**

Molly is a traditionalist in terms of resolution-making. She opens her new diary and writes her resolutions in her best ‘first page’ hand-writing. She is under no illusions that the diary will be forgotten by mid-February and the resolutions will be hit and miss, but what’s the point of not trying in the first place?

She is also self-aware enough to know that she should stick to goal-orientated, quantifiable targets and she already has some ideas.

  1. Start a new hobby (by attending some sort of class.)
  2. Stop taking sugar in coffee at work.
  3. Read one new book a month.



She sits back, pleased. Those are very achievable goals.

Indeed, by mid-February she is still going. At least, the resolutions are. She keeps trying to write her diary in bed, but ends up falling asleep instead.

Molly has a new hobby. Or at least attends classes for one. She’d always thought pottery looked fun and now she has a new mug on her desk as a result. She even painted on the words ‘No Sugar Please!’ on it so that she never forgets.

Molly is at lunch at her desk, empty mug by her elbow, and engrossed (or at least trying to be engrossed) in a rather grim new bestseller.

Sherlock is actually a welcome distraction from the fortieth page of this priest’s grisly murder. He is holding a Styrofoam cup which he thrusts towards her.

“Molly! Here’s some coffee. Three sugars wasn’t it? I assume your resolutions are finished by now.”

Molly takes the cup automatically. “Er, well…”

“Where’s the poisoning?”

Molly blinks. “Pardon?”

“The poisoning? Big man. Strange marking on the cuff of his sleeve?”

“Mr. Howard?”

“Yes him.” Sherlock waves a hand absently.

“He’s in number eighteen… do you want me to…”

“No, no, finish your book. Have you figured out that the prostitute is the killer yet?”

“”What?!” Molly looks at the book. So far the prostitute had only been a minor character. She looks up and Sherlock is gone.

Sherlock bribing her and trying to see the body on his own can only end in disaster. She jumps up and in her rush she catches the mug with her elbow and it smashes onto the floor.

“Dammit!” She’s half furious, half hysterical.

She picks up the coffee and takes a gulp. As promised it has three sugars and is perfect insofar as coffee from a machine can be.

With a sigh she downs the rest and goes after Sherlock.

**Lestrade**

The gym is Greg’s resolution. It’s been his resolution every year with the exception of 1999, when he got carried away and decided cycling to work was the way forward. That had lasted about four days and cost him about three hundred pounds in equipment and lycra shorts.

His new gym is perfect. It’s close to work – but not so close that too many people from work use it – and if he ever took lunches he’d be able to get there and back easily. It’s also on his way home, so he’d have no excuse not to go.  

It’s great. By mid-February he’s going three times a week.

By the end of February the owner, Mr. Howard, has been poisoned and Sherlock works out that most of the staff members were involved in spiking his water bottles over a period of months. Greg arrests him and the gym is temporarily closed.

When it eventually reopens, he doesn’t quite feel up to going back.

**John**

John knows that resolutions are pretty stupid and the chances of keeping up with them around Sherlock are practically zero, but he makes a few anyway if only so he has an answer ready when the question is asked of him at work.

“Made any resolutions then?” a receptionist asks.

“Oh you know,” he shrugs, “cutting down on the takeaways. A bit more fresh fruit and veg.”

It’s a nice doctor-y thing to say.

He does try. He spends an absolute fortune at the supermarket and stuffs the fridge so full of seasonal produce that Sherlock will be lucky if he can find any room for body parts.  Mrs. Hudson lends him a Jamie Oliver cookbook and a Heston Blumenthal one as an afterthought.

“You’re not supposed to try many of his recipes at home,” she says. “But with all that lab equipment you never know!”

John makes one decent casserole and a couple of healthy lunches for work. Sherlock uses half the contents of the fridge to make some flavoured bubbles from the Heston book, probably just to prove that he can.

On the fifth day John comes home, opens the fridge door, and finds an eyeball looking out from a lettuce leaf.

**John**

John’s _official_ New Year’s Resolution is to eat healthily but his unofficial one is, as always, to find someone special.

This time, he tells himself, he’ll make the effort. He’ll not let Sherlock interfere.

That seasonal produce lasts longer than that resolution.

**John (Again)**

There’s a snowstorm outside, or at least as close as London ever gets. It won’t stick, it’s causing chaos, and BBC News is deeply concerned about the effect it’s going to have on London’s firework display.

To John’s utter dismay, Sherlock had been planning to go watch it.

John would have found Sherlock’s enjoyment of fireworks charming, and did so the first year of their acquaintance. He had sent Sherlock off on November the 5th, quite happy to stay in and watch television.

When Sherlock had come back thoroughly disappointed John found out the real reason behind his enthusiasm.

“Fireworks are the absolute best cover for a gunshot. I rarely fail to catch a murderer when there’s a big firework display.” He had looked furious. “But nothing! I had to watch the display with everyone else. Pointless!”

After discovering Sherlock’s desire to run into a gunfight every Bonfire Night and New Year’s Eve, John decided to accompany him from that point on.

But it was slushy outside, the tube was in chaos, and even Sherlock wouldn’t be able to flag down a taxi tonight.  John set to work on convincing Sherlock to give this one a miss.

Once he’d practically given Sherlock a lecture on how any murderer with a brain in their head would be turning to the silence of poison, knives, and blunt instruments and putting them to work in reassuringly warm and dry murder spots, John moved onto plan B: distraction.

Which is where they are now. John is working very hard on distracting Sherlock, and Sherlock, to his credit, is making an effort to be distracted.

They’re on the sofa, neither of them ready to make the effort to get to a bed. Neither of them are fully undressed yet. Sherlock’s shirt is loose and unbuttoned, as are his trousers which he’s pushed down to his hips. He is still wearing his suit jacket.

John is on his knees, fully dressed aside from his cardigan which he slung over the back of a chair earlier.  Sherlock occasionally makes an effort to reach for John’s shirt, but John swats the hand away.

He works Sherlock with his mouth, his hands stoking the inside of Sherlock’s still-covered thighs. It’s making Sherlock squirm in an effort to remove the trousers and feel John’s hands fully against his skin. 

That’s for later though, right now John wants to take things slowly; it looks like they’re going to be inside for quite a while.

When Sherlock climaxes, John climbs back onto the sofa and he watches with pleasure as Sherlock recovers; he breathes slowly, looking peaceful and drained. When he does it’s a matter of moments before he is moving, pinning John to the sofa and kissing him thoroughly, clearly intending to return the favour and more besides.

“Mmm… bedroom…” John points out, not at all convinced they’ll make it that far.

Sherlock looks unconcerned and the kissing resumes.  John’s body is thrumming with pleasure, but this sudden affection is enough for him to be content just to be touched and kissed.

“This is a much better idea than going outside,” he murmurs.

“I’ll concede that point,” Sherlock agrees “Making any resolutions?”

It’s such a bizarrely mundane question from Sherlock that John laughs.

“Why?”

“Hoping that we don’t have to eat that casserole again.”

John swats him and Sherlock chuckles.

”There was nothing wrong with that casserole. And thank you so much for killing that resolution off.”

Sherlock smirks. “You’ve kept one resolution.”

John frowns. “I only made one, which you finished off in January.”

“I believe you promised to get a serious girlfriend?”

John huffed and looks down at Sherlock’s exposed and very male body. “I really didn’t keep that one.”

“Yes, but as we both know what you really meant was ‘have more sex’ and I think that, as of midnight tonight, that’s a resolution you’ve worked really hard on this year…”

John looks at the clock. “We better keep going just to be on the safe side…”

Sherlock doesn’t need to be told twice. His hands are already unbuttoning John’s jeans.

“Just to be sure.”

 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Heston Blumenthal is a British chef with an interest in molecular gastronomy. He's famous for snail porridge and bacon ice-cream. If there's a way to cook something with dry ice, he probably has already tried it. 
> 
> The fireworks/crime concept is one I've heard many times as a joke and not my own creation.


End file.
